Let’s think about this for a bit… a man lost his citizenship because he planned to do something really bad. Thankfully he was caught, even without the benefit of C-51.

The man is in jail but he’s scheduled to be eligible for parol in 2016. He has a wife and a child. But as a non-Canadian, where can he go on parol? Will he be deported to Jordan? If he really is a dangerous terrorist, how can we basically give him a get out of jail free card with deportation? If he no longer is the dangerous terrorist he was, how can justice, morality, humanity be served with deportation?

C-24, the law that allows for his citizenship to be revoked, according to the Conservatives, strengthens citizenship. But I just don’t see how. Before C-24, I believed that becoming or being a Canadian was something important and enduring. If a new Canadian got his citizenship through fraud could have it revoked because he never really earned it in the first place; it wasn’t his.

Now the Conservatives introduced cracks into what it means to be a citizen. If you do this and you fall under such and such conditions, you will have your citizenship revoked. Of course the actions and the conditions, now having been shown to be changeable are open for more changes. This thing called a Canadian Citizenship I thought was solid is now shown to be brittle.

Last year, Rex Murphy made a case in favour of C-24. His “ultimate” case involved a hypothetical Canadian joining up with an organization like ISIS and murdering another Canadian. Now, a year later, a Canadian has lost his citizenship because he planned to do something really bad. Next year, will we see pedophiles deported? Or will it be a friend of mine because he supports the boycott of Israel products made in the occupied territories? What Rex Murphy didn’t get in his opinion piece is that the “slippery slope” doesn’t always go from trivial to serious. It can go from specific, like in his example, to broad.

Personally, I don’t really care what happens to Amara aside from my belief that the security of Canada is better served by keeping him in Canada. However, the revoking of his citizenship harms what it means to have a Canadian citizenship. To follow Rex Murphy’s opinion piece, under Harper’s Conservatives, a Canadian citizenship now has the same gravity as a club membership.